Ark: Survival Evolved - Dinos and Leveling Survival Game

I would be up for starting again if we could drum up enough interest. I won’t be able to run another server this time, but happy to send some Paypal money if someone else wants to start one up. The Center was the last map I played and I never tried the Scorched Earth stuff.

I haven’t played in quite a while, but it seems every new game I play ends up being so boring compared to the experiences I had in ARK. It may be a good time to check it out again.

I am confused by this season pass, though. I thought I already had Scorched Earth. I guess I better look into that. Perhaps it is only for future content if you already purchased Scorched Earth previously.

Id also pitch in if interest was there.

I played the center map briefly but it didn’t grab me. Know nothing about scorch and beyond.

Did they add anything to flesh out the single player mode for the final release? I put about 150 hours into it - all solo, and I enjoyed just tooling around as a lonesome dinosaur rancher, then decided to set it aside until it left EA. That was over a year ago. I think the beaver was the latest critter they added then.

Just wondering if I should start over fresh or not.

I’d be down to pitch in as well.

What do you mean by “flesh out”? (Not snarking, sincere question.) You mean less grind or something?

Not to derail but where would one go to rent an ark server?

Who is good? Maybe with a nice web gui with full patching, setttings, etc controls?

Go to the thread for Ark on GWJ and go back a few pages from the end. A guy named Omni set up a server and said where he’s hosting it and a few other guys chimed in with options. Pretty sure everyone mentioned the prices they were paying too. Sorry this is vague I read it earlier and forgot specifics as well as I’m typing this from my phone

Maybe I’m misremembering, but it sounded like there was supposed to be some sort of storyline, involving (I think) the three big beacons, but the developers were still focusing on game mechanics and whatnot when it was in EA.

@Galadin was using GTX Gaming for Conan and @KevinC was using Blue Fang Solutions for ARK. Both have serviceable admin consoles (I bet all good hosts do these days). I haven’t price-shopped so can’t speak to that aspect.

It’s been quite a while for me as well and I haven’t kept up. I think they did flesh that stuff out somewhat by adding discoverable lore that leads to some sort of progression, but I haven’t looked into it because want my next experience to be fresh.

I also mentioned this in the Conan thread and I’m sure somewhere last year in this one, but for a relatively cheap option that had a very nice control panel I had a 10 slot with Survival Servers and it was a very pleasant experience.

Live-action videogame theater presents: Ark.

GTX Gaming looks pretty good. While I said I didn’t want to run one, I meant on my own machine at my house. I would be willing to start up the one at a hosting site and give admin rights to others that know how to better manage things.

What types of options do we want to run for a server? Try this new Ragnarok map? I am bored of the original and The Center, I believe, and would like to try something new.

What sorts of mods do people like? I looked at a few lists from GWJ and OTG and there seems to be a list of mods people like to use for sure. I would like to make the experience as enjoyable as possible and some of the mods are extremely well done.

The long weekend is starting and I want to play me some ARK! :). Let me know what you guys think. I can start to get a host service ready, but would need help setting the server up this time around, I think.

EDIT: Also, what sort of server settings do we want to consider? A boost to XP, resource extraction, and taming time are very important to reduce some grind. I will have to find my old notes.

I went ahead and put in an order for a 30 slot server with GTX Gaming. Even though it says it was paid, it shows pending on my services summary so I will post an update if/when I get something up and running that folks can use.

Here are some of the mods I think would be good to start with so far:

Current mods:
Advanced Rafts
Castles, Keeps and Forts Medieval Architecture
Death Helper
HG Stacking Mod
Omnicular v1.51
Pet Finder
Ship Cargo Decor
Ship Quarters Decor
Upgrade Station ?
eco’s Garden Decor
ecoRPdecor
ecoTrees

Feel free to add comments and suggestions.

Sounds awsome, actually installed it on my system again lastnight.

Only request is to bump up taming/gathering/exp rates similar to last round.

Keep us updated, eager to jump in again.

I got confirmation just now that the server is ready. It defaults to The Island, it seems, so I will see if I can get it up with a new map. I need to sort through my emails and get the admin details and try them out.

I will let you know.

For maps…

Scorch looks cool but is a 20$ (not a turn off for me but might for other folks).

Ragnarok looks really cool but is only half(?) finished.

This island is good but we’ve done that before.

Center seemed okay, not sure how far folks got there.

There is also now a procedural generated option for maps? Not sure how well that would work out.

I will fire it up with Ragnarok to start with just to make sure it works and to see if there is enough on the map to play with. We can always change it.

I will PM you the details @kono1134

I may have set some of the settings backwards as I don’t recall all of them. We can go through them closer once things are up and running and we decide on a map for good.

I will also try first with no mods just to make sure everything is working properly.

Kono got in game. I am heading out within the hour for 2-5 hours so for people that come on and want to play, kono can hand out the info in PM if I am not here.

Once I get back, we can look at doing some Mods perhaps. I tweaked some of the common server settings like fast XP, harvest and taming. No BattleEye, etc.

Oh wow, this is amazing! Haven’t been at my desk for a lot of today or I’d have jumped on this sooner. Sign me up as well, if you still have spare slots and are willing to have me! I’m down to help out in any way you need.

As for maps and mods, I really don’t care all that much what you have in place. Agree that The Island and The Center got a little stale after a while, but again not a big deal to me.

One thing I noticed while watching a streamer just jumping in, a few days ago. They had turned up the gathering rate, and later realized that this affected the XP rate as well and they were getting ridiculous amounts of XP from resource gathering, so they dialed that back. Didn’t see the specific settings/numbers they were going with.

I’ll install the game and attempt to join in this evening.

Will send ya the info, @barstein.

Yeah the harvest and XP is only 2x, so hopefully not too bad. We can see how it goes.

I don’t know that I’ll play lots, but I’m interested.